Category Archives: Desserts

This is a very common dessert in Romania and it has many variations throughout the country. You can basically enrich the recipe by adding Turkish delight, raisins, nuts, almonds, coconut flakes, whatever you feel might work well with the rum-chocolate biscuit base of the dessert.

The recipe presented here is pretty basic and it’s really easy to make.

This is what you need for approximately 5 rolls (each roll would be 3cm/1.2 inches in diameter and 30cm/12 inches long)- of course, you can make them any size you want:

– 800g/1.8 lbs normal (sweet) biscuits

– 350ml/10 oz. milk (preferably not skimmed milk, but use 3.5% milk)

– 10 spoons of sugar

– 220g butter/0.5 lbs margarine

– 8 spoon-fulls of cocoa

– 100g/0.3 lbs coconut flakes

– Rum flavour (as much as you prefer) – you can also add some vanilla flavor

– Cellophane wrap for rolling the dessert

The first thing you have to do is probably the most troublesome: you have to crumble the biscuits into a powder. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it can also have bigger bits and biscuit crumbles – but it mostly has to be powdered down in order to be able to form a paste with the syrup you’ll cook next. You can do it by hand or you can also use a coffee grinder.

Crumbling the biscuits

The syrup is made out of the milk, sugar and cocoa that you heat up in a pot (using whole milk makes it easier for the syrup not to stick to the pot). You slowly heat the mixture, stirring carefully until the sugar melts.

Next up, you leave the syrup to cool off for a bit and add the butter. It should melt nicely in the warm syrup mixture. If it doesn’t , heat the pot just a bit and you’ll see the butter will start to melt.

After the mixture has cooled down a bit, add the rum and vanilla flavor in the syrup, stir it well and pour over the biscuit powder.

Mix it well until it all becomes a cocoa-coloured mixture. * if you prefer you could also add raisins, almonds, nuts, and other extras that you might like to have in the roll.

Pouring the cocoa-butter mix onto the biscuits

Mixing the syrup and biscuit crumbles

The dessert is ready, you only need to roll it up nicely and keep it in the fridge for about 3-4 hours before serving. Cooling in the fridge will allow the butter to thicken the mixture and coagulate it nicely.

For rolling the dessert you have to use cellophane wrap. Take out a rectangular piece, as large as you would want your roll to be. Put some coconut flakes on it and then put the biscuit mixture shaping it nicely into a roll. Then roll the cellophane wrap so that the biscuit roll is all covered in coconut flakes, fold it up and shape it into the circular form you desire and then store it in the fridge.

It’s easy to make and is absolutely divine, especially if served with a cup of milk! 😀

This cake is a very special one for Romanians of all generations. Everyone has grown up with it and once you’ve tasted it, you’re bound to adore it.

It’s a mixture of aromas with chocolate, rum and vanilla and it’s incredibly sweet and soft.

There are 4 important parts in making this cake: the dough, the chocolate cream, the syrup and the glazing.

This is what you need:

For the dough:

– 6 eggs

– 200g/0.45lbs sugar

– 40ml/1.35oz water

– 40ml/1.35oz sunflower oil

– 3 full tbsp cocoa

– 200g/0.45lbs white flour

– 1 tbsp baking powder

For the chocolate cream:

– 3 yolks

– 150g/0.33lbs powdered sugar

– 250g/0.55lbs butter/margarine

– 4 tbsps cocoa

– Rum (flavour)

For the syrup:

– 500ml/17oz water

– 100g/0.22lbs sugar

– Rum and vanilla extracts/essences

For the glazing:

– 200g/0.44lbs dark chocolate (preferably no more than 60%cocoa)

– 50g/0.11lbs butter

– 50ml/1.7oz milk

First up, making the dough. Set your oven to 180 degrees Celsius/356 degrees Fahrenheit and let it head up. In the meantime, take 2 bowls and separate the egg whites from the yolks.

Take the bowl with the yolks and gradually add the oil while stirring constantly. You should get a mixture that resembles mayonnaise. Use a kitchen mixer to beat the egg whites in a foam – don’t stop until the foam is very firm.

Next up, mix the egg whites with the sugar, the water and the yolk paste making sure that you stir gently, with a wooden spoon and with up-down movements. Add the baking soda.

Take a tray, grease it with some butter and flour (so that the dough won’t stick) and pour the dough mix in. Put it in the oven and leave it for approximately 30 minutes. To check if it’s done, use a toothpick to prick holes into the dough. If no dough sticks to the toothpick when you take it out, then the dough is done and you can take it out of the oven and leave it to cool.

Preparing the chocolate cream

Make sure the butter you use is soft, just take it out of the fridge some time before you begin to make the cream so it softens. Put it in a bowl and stir it with a wooden spoon until it becomes more creamy. Add the powdered sugar and mix them with an electric mixer. When it becomes more homogenous, add the cocoa, the eggs and the rum extract.

Next up, when the cake (cooked dough) is cool enough, take a large knife and cut it, horizontally, in two equal layers.

Making the syrup:

Put the sugar and 2-3 tbsp of water in a pot and let it boil at low temperature, stirring so that the sugar melts nicely. Add the rest of the water (water that should be lukewarm), stir and add the rum extract.

Pour this syrup (slowly, with a spoon) onto the 2 cake layers. Make sure that is reaches every part of the cake.

When this is done, take the chocolate cream and spread it onto one layer. Afterwards take the second layer and put it on top of the cream.

Put the cake in the fridge and wait for about 2 hours so that the cream becomes more thick and clings to the cake.

Making the glazing:

When you have already taken the cake out of the fridge, you can start making the glazing.

In a pot, melt the dark chocolate with some butter and just a bit of milk. Stir it into a semi-thick mixture.

Cut the cake into little squared pieces (approx 4cm by 4cm) and then pour the glazing over each piece.